At a panel on cyber security at Georgetown University, the National Security Agency (NSA) director made statements that suggested the NSA has been working on some kind of “media leaks legislation.” The legislation would obviously be in response to the disclosures from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but, until now, there has been no public indication that any anti-leaks legislation would be proposed in response to what Snowden disclosed.

Spencer Ackerman, a journalist for The Guardian, reported that NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said during the event, “Recently, what came out with the justices in the United Kingdom …they looked at what happened on [David] Miranda and other things, and they said it’s interesting: journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues. They don’t know how to weigh the fact of what they’re giving out and saying, is it in the nation’s interest to divulge this.”

It was his first public comments endorsing the British security services decision to have journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner, Miranda, detained under a terrorism law in the country. The security services detained him to get their hands on Snowden documents he was believed to be carrying.

Alexander said: “My personal opinion: these leaks have caused grave, significant and irreversible damage to our nation and to our allies. It will take us years to recover.”

He argued, according to the New York Times, that the nation had not been able to pass legislation to protect against cyber attacks on Wall Street or other “civilian targets” because of Snowden.

“We’ve got to handle media leaks first,” Alexander additionally declared. “I think we are going to make headway over the next few weeks on media leaks. I am an optimist. I think if we make the right steps on the media leaks legislation, then cyber legislation will be a lot easier.”

Two individuals who specifically track developments such as leaks legislation had no idea what Alexander was talking about when he mentioned the legislation. Ackerman reported, “Angela Canterbury, the policy director for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said she was unaware of any such bill. Neither was Steve Aftergood, an intelligence policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists,” who posts regularly at Secrecy News.

Whatever Alexander has been working on behind the scenes likely has been developed with the support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, who have been some of the most vocal critics of the disclosures (as well as the most fervent defenders of the NSA in the aftermath of the leaks).

In 2012, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which Feinstein chairs, approved anti-leaks measures as part of an intelligence authorization bill. The measures were being considered as a response to leaks that had occurred on cyber warfare against Iran, President Barack Obama’s “kill list,” and a CIA underwear bomb plot sting operation in Yemen.

The measures would have required: that Congress be notified when “authorized public disclosures of national intelligence” are made; that “authorized disclosures” of “classified information” be recorded; that procedures for conducting “administrative investigations of unauthorized disclosures” be revamped by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) ; that the DNI assess the possibility of expanding procedures for detecting and preventing “unauthorized disclosures” to other Executive Branch personnel; that certain people be prohibited from serving as consultants or having contracts with media organizations; that only a limited number of individuals in intelligence agencies be permitted to speak with members of the media and that responsibilities intelligence community employees have to protect “classified information” be made more clear.

The anti-leaks proposals also called for disciplinary measures against people who violated “classified information” by making “unauthorized disclosures.” This would have included: letters of reprimand, placing notice of violations in personnel files and informing congressional oversight committees of such notices, revoking security clearances, prohibiting employees from obtaining new security clearances and firing employees. Additionally, a provision would also have made it possible for an employee to lose his or her federal pension benefits if they were responsible for an “unauthorized disclosure.”

There was much condemnation of the proposals. A letter to the Senate signed by civil liberties, open government and watchdog groups argued the policy would not “protect” the “nation’s legitimate secrets” but would instead open the door to “abuse” and chill “critical disclosures of wrongdoing.” It described how the measure on surrendering pension benefits was an “extreme approach” to security that “would imperil the few existing safe channels for those in the intelligence community who seek to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality. Conscientious employees or former employees considering reporting wrongdoing to Congress and agency Inspectors General, for example, would risk losing their pensions without adequate due process.”

Multiple newspapers published editorials criticizing the proposals and urging caution in the midst of all the leaks hysteria in Washington, DC.

Senator Ron Wyden objected to the anti-leaks proposals and put a hold on the intelligence authorization bill. All but one of the anti-leaks proposals were removed. The provision requiring notification of “authorized” disclosures was left in the bill.

On the Senate floor, Wyden stated after the anti-leaks proposals were removed:

…I’m all for Congress recognizing that leaks are a serious problem, and for doing things to show the men and women of the US intelligence community the seriousness of this issue is recognized here in this body. But it is important for Congress to remember that not everything that is done in the name of stopping leaks is necessarily wise policy.

In particular, I think Congress should be extremely skeptical of any anti-leak legislation that threaten to encroach upon the freedom of the press, or that would reduce access to information that the public has a right to know…

Significantly, Wyden also declared:

Congress, too, would be much less effective in its oversight if members did not have access to informed press accounts on foreign policy and national security topics. And while many members of Congress don’t like to admit it, members often rely on the press to inform them about problems that congressional overseers have not discovered on their own. I have been on the Senate Intelligence Committee for twelve years now, and I can recall numerous specific instances where I found out about serious government wrongdoing – such as the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, or the CIA’s coercive interrogation program – only as a result of disclosures by the press.

This is the case now. For those who were not leading intelligence committees and were not committed to protecting surveillance programs or shielding them from scrutiny, much of what has been disclosed consisted of information congressmen or senators did not know the government was doing. They can now make informed decisions about whether to support current programs or policies and can also decide whether to support proposed reform legislation to curtail NSA surveillance powers because of Snowden’s leaks.

It is, of course, unknown what this legislation being secretly developed intends to do in order to address “media leaks,” but it is reasonable to predict that it will bear a stark similarity to “remedies” approved by the Senate intelligence committee in 2012, which Wyden played a role in blocking from passage.

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Alexander has expressed interest in some kind of action to stop the publishing of information from the leaks. He declared in an interview posted by the Pentagon:

I think it’s wrong that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000—whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these—you know it just doesn’t make sense. We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on.

In the wider US intelligence community, DNI James Clapper, stated during a Senate intelligence committee hearing on “worldwide threats,” “Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed, to prevent even more damage to US security.”

NSA Inspector General George Ellard, the person who Snowden was supposed and go to with his concerns about NSA surveillance, said at a Georgetown Law Center event, that Snowden had been “manic in his thievery. His disclosures were “open-ended, as his agents decide daily which documents to disclose.”

The “agents” he was referring to were the journalists, who had been covering the documents—people like Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and others at the Guardian, New York Times, ProPublica and First Look, who have seen copies of the documents for news stories that have been published.

Constantly, US intelligence officials, including Alexander, have accused the media of “sensationalizing” leaks, rarely ever producing any specific examples to prove that what has been widely reported about the NSA has been inaccurate.

The agency has struggled to overcome news coverage, where it is suggested that they are responsible for unchecked surveillance on citizens not just in America but all over the world. The agency has tried having a friendly person in the news media shoot an infomercial for them that aired as a “60 Minutes” episode. It has tried developing talking points and sending letters out to employees, which suggest they will weather the storm. It even advised employees to take advantage of Thanksgiving dinner gatherings to explain to family and friends what it considered to be the truth. But none of that has effectively disrupted a now eight-month debate that has greatly affected Americans’ attitudes toward government surveillance and spurred the development of a market for privacy tools.

One of the few moves Alexander has left before he leaves his position as director is to convince leaders in Congress to take up “media leaks legislation” so that the next NSA director does not have to struggle with another Edward Snowden.

Such legislation may enjoy some success because President Barack Obama has fiercely opposed leaks and gone so far as to prosecute a record number of people under the Espionage Act, which in the process has created a chilling effect for journalists. However, the same groups and voices that spoke out in 2012 will speak out again and condemn the legislation if it appears it will have profound implications for press freedom. And criticism will be particularly loud if it does more than target federal government employees and goes a step further by targeting members of the press in some manner.

The chancellery is unhappy about the report in the New York Times. Merkel by no means meant to express that Putin behaved irrational. In fact she told Obama that Putin has a different perspective about the Crimea [than Obama has].

So we have our own USA military Coup by another corrupt General. Are these Four Star Cowards also going to occupy Afghanistan for another twelve years? Karzai wants to kick them out because the American Generals are bloodthirsty murderers.

To Karzai, the war was not waged with his country’s interests in mind.

“Afghans died in a war that’s not ours,’ he said in the interview, his first in two years with a U.S. newspaper…

In Karzai’s mind, al-Qaeda is “more a myth than a reality” and the majority of the United States’ prisoners here were innocent. He’s certain that the war was “for the U.S. security and for the Western interest.”…

As he escorted two Washington Post journalists out of his office Saturday evening, he said: “To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger.’’

The goddamned people running this country are as un-American as has ever walked this earth. These assholes don’t know or give a shit what America stands (stood?) for, only that America is the team that they’re on.

If we were going to have a new round of charges of un-American activities, most every elected pol, federal judge, and commissioned officer above the rank of Lt. Col would be the first place to start.

Maybe we need a new McCarthy. This just isn’t the same America I grew up in, no matter how many try and tell me “it’s always been this way.” Maybe underneath it has, but it’s wide open for all to see now, and I’m not sure that underneath it was ever this damn un-American either.

Yet if you dare utter the word “fascism” you’re ridiculed for being a whacko.

I would bet anyone that back in the day, most German citizens didn’t consider their country to be fascist either, until it was waaayyyy past the time when anything could be done about it.

I bet they would be much like the majority here, not believing it, dismissing it out of hand, and labeling anyone who dared to suggest such a thing in THEIR country was out of his/her mind.

Folks, the way it works is there is no public announcement where the government and media just one day says “Okay, we’re fascist now.” A country just moves there bits at a time, and like the boiling frog, it’s citizens mostly don’t even realize they’ve crossed the line despite crossing it some time back.

And this wave of fascism is world wide. Go ahead and dismiss such language folks, but talk to me in 50 years and let’s see how our grandchildren’s children view the situation. If they’re able, they’ll ask some tough questions of us, about why we didn’t stop it.

Lastly, Wyden, sir, as a veteran, you are two faced prick. Why don’t you even live in the state you represent?

Doesn’t want to disclose the drone legislation he recently rammed thru. Now Oregon has drone testing sites and subsidies for drone facilities in the new future. Can’t be head of the Spending committee, oops, I mean Ways and Means, for nuttin’.

And what he said was really scary and should frighten the shap out of a lot left on the fence, because the fence has been torn down, then driven over and then burned.

The bubble(s) both NSA and CIA now exist within have become and are unmoored and adrift from the main thrust(s) of U.S.Constitution and it is plain to see since 1950 a long line of USians up on Capitol Hill and those who get to dress up in archaic black robes at SCOTUS and the 11 USians who did occupy the Oval Office as POTUS in the White House and the #12 USian who currently holds the Oval Office as POTUS took up and have taken up a convoluted legal / political / moral / ethical concept of what USA and USG should be doing with and thru agencies such as NSA and CIA.

Pity it is with all the supposedly highly trained, schooled and mentored USian lawyers and legal scribes to be found across USA here in early 21st century so few seem capable of doing what is right and doing what now clearly needs to be done — mounting relentless opposition to and confronting, contesting and taking to conviction a whole bunch of USians in WashingtonDC who plainly have wandered far away and from what U.S.Constitution says #1 and appear to be taken up with being liars, snoops, thugs, killers and fascists and unbound militarists #2.

Perhaps were Wall St. to monetize and sell stock options and set up bonus plan pay outs for defending,abiding with and maintaining the U.S.Constitution we USians would then be seeing better outcomes. As it is there is no big money in doing the U.S.Constitution — money talks big in 2014 USA. See Citizens United. See how WashingtonDC is for sale and 99% USians get sold out. Which USians are going to and go to jail these days? Not many USian politicians nor big money Wall St. gamers / USian capitalists. C.Manning? In jail. John Kiriakou? In jail. E.Snowden? Being openly attacked and so very likely facing a certain jail sentence if not something more deadly if captured by USG. Imagine that.

Post 1950 sanity challenged USG / WH/ Capitol Hill / NSA / CIA quest for empire, conquest, militarism and open ended covert/overt national security / secrecy and imperial political and militarized treachery / death dealing being done in USians name will need to be slowed and stopped. Barack Obama,Diane Feinstein and Mike Rodgers and the likes of Keith Alexander and James Clapper plain to see here in 2014 are not going to slow or stop what NSA / CIA want to do and be doing / not doing as KG is on point above in showing and telling.

The shamelessness now being so openly displayed describes so much of what has gone deeply wrong. From Obama and Feinstein and Rodgers to Alexander and Clapper and then going back to 1950.

hiiii
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